Speeches by Richard W. FisherHarlingen, Texas | February 16, 2007

Remarks to the Marine Military
Academy upon Receipt of the Iwo Jima Leadership Award

Thank you, General Cheney. Our
paths first crossed in 1967, when we entered the Naval
Academy as skinny little plebes. We had many things
drilled into us that year, starting with every instructional
quote from a book called “Reef Points” that
we had to carry with us at all times. One quote was
the John Paul Jones creed: An officer is a “gentleman
of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy
and the nicest sense of personal honor.”

General, you left Annapolis and
went on to a distinguished career as the prototypical,
ideal officer in the Marine Corps, and you have lived
up to John Paul Jones’ creed in spades. I am proud
of you for being such a good man. And I am proud and
honored to have been your classmate.

You remember, of course, that
we also had drilled into us the essential need to always
be exact—to never exaggerate or boast or misrepresent
anything, anywhere, at anytime. In the Marine Corps
and the Navy, people’s lives depend on you, and
taking liberties with the facts can place them in danger.
Of course, old warriors earn the right to exaggerate
just a little, especially when they talk about the past
exploits of friends. Which is another way of saying
that I will forgive Steve’s taking liberties in
that introduction. That sounded a lot better than how
a no-nonsense, tell-it-straight Steve Cheney would have
said it when we were by-the-letter midshipmen: “Ladies
and gentleman, tonight’s guest is Richard Fisher.
He works for a bank.”

The Marine Military Academy is
lucky to have you at its helm, Steve. I am grateful
to be here as your guest tonight at this General H.
M. Smith Foundation Dinner and very honored—and,
frankly, surprised—to receive the Iwo Jima Leadership
Award.

I have a great staff at the Dallas
Fed, where 1,300 patriotic men and women work hard at
all the things our central bank does—from crafting
monetary policy that helps fuel America’s mammoth,
$13 trillion economy without igniting inflation, to
keeping the banking system sound and the payments system
humming so that billions of dollars in currency and
checks get to where they are needed, as needed.

My colleagues at the Fed were
excited to hear I was receiving this honor tonight.
I asked a handful of them to suggest some of their favorite
quotes about leadership, which I might use to inspire
you and the cadets this evening. They came up with some
pretty good ones:

From Winston Churchill:
“Never give in—never, never, never, never,
in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give
in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never
yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming
might of the enemy.”

From Robert E. Lee: “Never
do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one.”

From Gen. George S. Patton:
“Never”—these Great Men sure like
to use the word “never”—“tell
people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they
will surprise you with their ingenuity.”

From Dwight D. Eisenhower:
“Leadership is the art of getting someone else
to do something you want done because he wants to do
it.”

From Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf:
“Going to war without France is like going deer
hunting without your accordion.” Whoa, how did
that one get in here? I’ll have to use my leadership
skills to get that speechwriter to want to
pursue another profession.

And here is one about the greatest
corps of leaders anywhere on the planet, a great comment
from Ronald Reagan: “Some people spend an entire
lifetime wondering if they made a difference. The Marines
don’t have that problem.”

Men and women of conviction and
purpose—especially those given to punctilious
courtesy and the nicest sense of personal honor—lead
us into the future unafraid of the obstacles that might
deter others, just as their military counterparts, like
Gen. Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith,
fearlessly led their comrades into battle in World War
II. (Mind you, no central banker would want a nickname
like that; something tells me that neither a “Howlin’
Mad” Bernanke nor a “Howlin’ Mad”
Greenspan would have been appointed chairman of the
Federal Reserve.)

Great words of wisdom can inspire
us, but they are not what determine who we are. Character
comes from our upbringing and our experiences—and
it is on this very personal level that I want to address
the members of the Corps of Cadets who are with us tonight.

I have been in your shoes. At
14, I was shipped from California to Admiral Farragut
Academy in Toms River, N.J., a school like this one,
but run according to naval tradition. It was a tough
and unforgiving place. General Cheney’s counterpart,
our headmaster, was named Raven O. Dodge. He had one
arm. We lived in fear of him. But we respected him,
even if the guys on the swim team called him “Sidestroke.”

We rose at 6:15 every morning,
mustered out to the parade field for inspection and
marched to breakfast in formation. We had morning classes
and then formed up and marched to lunch with our drum
and bugle corps. After lunch came afternoon classes,
then at 3:30 we were off to activities and sports, and
then, for the last time for the day, we formed up again
and marched to dinner at 6. We went straight to our
rooms after dinner to do homework before lights-out
at 10. On weekends, we had full-dress parades. We learned
how to handle weapons and, being at a naval academy
prep school, how to tie knots and navigate by the stars.

My buddies back home thought I
was nuts. They were with their families, dating good-looking
girls, driving cars, spending money, having fun, sleeping
late and doing things on their own good time. I was
in New Jersey for four years marching to meals, studying
hard, leading a highly disciplined life and getting
by on a $2-a-week allowance. We got $5 a week as seniors,
but it didn’t make a whole lot of difference because
we only got out on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. My
life and my friends’ lives were as different as
night and day. Sound familiar?

I wouldn’t go back and change
any of it because the lessons I learned in those four
years made it possible for me to accomplish all those
things that General Cheney bragged on earlier. We learned
to internalize—to come by as instinct—all
those attributes mentioned so eloquently in those great
leaders’ quotations. We learned the values of
camaraderie and esprit de corps, and that semper
fidelis was more than a slogan. Being faithful
to your country, your mission and your potential is
reward in itself.

We also learned a lesson that
is quintessentially American. When you wear a uniform
and you live in the same dorms and eat the same food
in the same place, nobody cares whether you are rich
or poor or where you or your parents came from. I was
the son of immigrants. My father never got past fourth
grade; my mother was a secretary. I was at school with
a lot of rich boys who had great legacies and fancy
bloodlines, but it didn’t make a bit of difference.
You moved up in rank according to your effort and achievement.
You got what you earned and you earned what you got.

I can’t tell you how many
times people have asked me: Just how did you get to
Annapolis and Harvard and all those fancy schools? How
did you end up on Wall Street, make money, become an
ambassador and get to do all those high-sounding things
in Washington? How did you end up working with Kissinger?
And how did you get to sitting at the table with Greenspan
and Bernanke at the Federal Reserve? What’s your
secret?

Well, it does help to have good
luck on your side—serendipity comes in mighty
handy. I have had more than my share of it. But I believe
that the lessons and discipline learned at Farragut
Academy, just like those you are learning here, are
what made a lot of that good luck possible.

As to “the secret,”
you can forget all those quotes my great staff came
up with. I’m going to give it to you straight
from the ultimate source: Oprah Winfrey. As accomplished
an American as you will ever find, she said it best:
“The big secret in life is that there is no big
secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re
willing to work.”

That hits the nail on the head.
That, and remembering you never, my friends, never,
never, never, go deer hunting with an accordion.

Thank you. Semper Fi.

About the Author

Richard W. Fisher is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve System.